"Oh!" she said, protesting.

"Fool," he said. "This will be the last joke, I promise you." His men, his bodyguard, immediately deserted him, moving out along the edges of the hall. She saw it happen, so suddenly, so purposefully, she had no time to think, and her heart doubled its beats. Di Verona had no intention of waiting. The moment he was in the hall, his men were moving out, positioning themselves to strike, to take advantage of the panic that di Verona knew would come. And would the assassin who struck the Doge even wear di Verona's colors?

No, never, she thought, things coming clear in the reality of the moment. No, di Verona meant to be the avenger of the Doge, to size power. There were surely others, less obvious, in the crowd, men the Doge's guards could not spot, while his own men disposed of supposed traitors.

"You're hurting me," she protested when he pulled at her, and stumbled on her skirts. "You're making us a spectacle!"

Thatstopped him, when no other reason would. She saw it.

"They're laughing at us," she said. "Oh, I hatethis." Shehad seized power now. She suddenly knew il duco's weakness, and it was fear. He snatched her away, near one of the tables piled high with food. A fountain there spilled wine red as blood. Its vinous smell nauseated her. So did he. But now at least she could wholly despise him. She snatched a sweetmeat with her wounded hand, and popped it into her mouth, then snatched a cup, and let a servant fill it with wine. She sipped, then delved into her purse, slipping items into the black lace bandages of her hand.

Di Verona took another cup himself, drank, and set it down empty as trumpets sounded, as the Doge, Antonio Rafetto, came in, no longer the white harlequin, but wearing black, with his red cap, and his cloak, and lifting his hands to welcome his guests. Only one thing was not the Doge's. His littlest finger sparked white fire, the diamonds of her ring, their pledge. For a moment il Duce looked toward his prey. And quickly, slipping the little bottle into her fingers, Giacinta pulled the waxed stopper and poured the black liquid into her own cup, a little black swirl which immediately vanished in the deep, dark red. Onto her thumb she slid the Doge's ring, asking herself desperately how to warn him of what she saw, and knowing, if things went wrong, that this cup was her only rescue. She took it up and carried it against her heart, a heart that beat like a hammer.

"My guests," Antonio called out. "Welcome! Eat, drink, dance, everyone!" People moved forward to meet him, a surge like the tide against the gates, but the Doge's guards prevented them, to universal chagrin. The wave broke in confusion, and milled aside. She saw di Verona's face, saw him bite his lip. So one approach was frustrated. The musicians struck up a tune. Couples took to the floor. Di Verona, however, did not. She pretended to sip her wine, and di Verona looked about the edges of the room. She began to edge away, thinking she might make an escape, even warn Antonio's guards, using Antonio's ring, but di Verona seized her wrist.

"What will your men do now?" she asked him fiercely, and the triton-mask turned toward that challenge. "Oh, come, come, signore. I know. Do you think I'm a fool?"

"Don't risk being a dead fool."

"Shall I not? They failed to get near him." A wild, spur of the moment plan rose up in her mind, a last brazen chance, even with her hand held prisoner, and she took it. "Signore Rafetto!" she called out above the music. "Signore Rafetto! Di Verona hates you! But you know that. His assassins are in the crowd!"

"Fool!" di Verona cried, and the music died in discord, frightened couples seeking the edges of the ballroom, places less in a line between her voice and the Doge and his men.

"You asked me to marry you, Signore Rafetto! And I accept!"

It was embarrassment, public embarrassment, that deadliest thing to di Verona, that thing he could not survive. The crowd murmured in fear and astonishment as the Doge stepped forward a pace.

"Giacinta!"

"Fool, I say!" Di Verona wrenched her arm, making her spill a little of the wine. It splashed, dark, on her bosom. And suddenly there was racket on the sides of the hall, armed conflict that sent guests fleeing back to the floor, and toward the shelter of the foyer. But city police were there, armed, and in force, sealing the doors.

Di Verona saw it, too, and his grip faltered. Giacinta turned and smiled at him, Nonna's kind of smile, when they had left Milano, Nonna's smile when they had faced the rundown house and the weed-choked garden.

"Drink to the Doge," she said, cold as the depths of the canals. "Take my cup. It's your escape. They won't laugh, if you drink it."

"Damn you," di Verona said. Silence had fallen about the edges of the hall. There were other police, one might think, behind the masks in the crowd. There were weapons in this hall besides those di Verona had brought.

She offered the cup up to him. "They won't laugh," she said, as she would have said it to herself.

"They won't arrest you, or take you to the prison."

Di Verona seized it from her hand, wine slipping over its edge. His hand was white-knuckled on the cup, as if he would crush it. She thought he would fling it at her. Black and red harlequins were moving toward them both, shouldering guests aside.

But he drank, all at a draft, and flung the cup at them instead. The harlequins pulled his hand from her, and began to take him away. A bridge led from the Palazzo to the prisons. This hall was sometimes a court, so she heard.

He did not go beyond a few steps before he fell, and they carried him. There was, she had promised it, no laughter, only stunned silence throughout the hall.

Her arm was bruised and wrenched. The police would have seized her, too, but Antonio himself pushed through their rank and took her in charge, took her in his arms, hugged her tight against him.

"I have your ring," she said against his neck, in the murmuring of the crowd, and showed it to him.

"Shall I give it back, harlequin?"

"A trade," he proposed to her, her Antonio, alive, forewarned, and well-defended, her prince of merchants. He took her burned hand in his and kissed it, and made the exchange, the little diamond circlet for his heavy signet. "It fits better. Giacinta, Giacinta, your poor hand." They kissed, deeply, passionately. The crowd surrounded them. She took off the bauta, let it fall on its ribbon, and put her arms about him and kissed him back. The voices around them cheered the Doge, cheered their freedom, cheered the luck of young lovers.

Floods might come. The great flood always threatened. La Repubblica Serenissima still kept her suitor at bay.

Giacinta Sforza had no such intention.

VISIBLE LIGHT

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This one is a very personal account—as my odd short stories come out of a very eclectic set of interests, and a very diverse set of studies and experiences. In composing a book, it seemed hard to find anything in common among these stories, except me—so I decided to greet the reader as a voyager, which I am, an inveterate traveler, curious about all manner of very strange things. My college studies involved ancient languages, Roman law and the ethnology and immigration patterns of Bronze Age Greece, along with the rise of technology and the evolution of world view—I'm lately fascinated with Egypt—and what do I do but write science fiction?